AN ACOUSTIC DESCRIPTION OF HIGH VOWEL SYNCOPE IN LEZGIAN

This paper reports on a preliminary acoustic description of high vowel syncope in one dialect of Lezgian, a NE Caucasian, Daghestanian language. Acoustic data from one speaker confirm the absence of a vowel in the syncope context, but traces of it remain visible (and audible) in the preceding stop release or fricative noise. This raises the question of possible vowel devoicing. It also suggests that a relevant account for the facts should be based on gestural overlap rather than deletion. In support of this hypothesis, two types of measurements are reported. First, vowel duration shows that even non-high vowels are considerably shortened when stress is shifted away from them, participating in a similar process as high vowels. Second, the duration of the inter-burst interval in resulting stop sequences varies depending on the stop place of articulation.